Less than two years after Jets legend Joe Klecko entered the Pro Football Hall of Fame as a Seniors Candidate in 2023, three more players who wore the Green & White have been nominated to become members of the Hall of Fame's Class of 2025 as Seniors. Two are members of the Jets' Ring of Honor and the third has been a Long Islander and New Yorker who also in his distinguished career played quarterback for the Green & White.
DE Mark Gastineau — Klecko's partner in pass rush for the New York Sack Exchange — as well as LB Larry Grantham and QB Boomer Esiason are the three who are among the 183 nominees now being considered by the Hall's Seniors Screening Committee to advance to a list of 50 semifinalists.
Gastineau holds the Jets' record for official sacks (since 1982) with 74 during his 10-year Jets career, and also for his 107.5 regular-season sacks from 1979-81 when sacks were not official statistics, as well as 116 total sacks including postseason takedowns. Gastineau also set the official NFL record with 22 sacks in 1984 that stood for 17 seasons until Michael Strahan notched 22.5 sacks for the Giants in 2001. Gastineau was a member of the Ring of Honor's Class of 2012.
Grantham, who died at 78 in 2017, was one of the early sturdy pillars of the Jets franchise, one of the defensive stars of the Super Bowl III team. He was an original New York Titan/Jet and played all 13 of his pro seasons as the franchise's indomitable No. 60. He was named an AFL All-Pro first-teamer and an AFL All-Star five times each, and was inducted into the Ring of Honor in 2011.
Esiason, before his New York and national broadcasting career as a sports talker and game analyst, was an upper-echelon NFL QB who started and ended his 14-year NFL career with Cincinnati, but who was traded in 1993 by the Bengals to his hometown Jets and at the end of that season was named to the last of his four career Pro Bowls. "Boom" started 42 games for the 1993-95 Jets, completing 764 of his 1,302 passes for 8,478 yards, 49 touchdowns and 39 interceptions.
WR Art Powell, who died at 78 in 2015, never wore green and white because he was only on the blue-and-gold New York Titans from 1960-62, but he's also on the screening committee's radar. He was one of the outstanding early pass-catchers in franchise history with starts in all 42 of the Titans' games, 204 receptions, 3,178 yards and 27 touchdowns. He led the AFL in 1960 with 14 TD catches, and he and Don Maynard teamed up for 1,000-yard seasons in '60 and '62, when Powell had a league-leading 1,130 receiving yards.
K Nick Lowery is also on the Hall of Fame's initial list of Seniors to be considered for induction, and while he will be known as the Kansas City Chiefs' Pro Bowl kicker from 1980-93, he finished the last three seasons of his 18-season pro career as the Jets kicker from 1994-96.
The screening committee is a new entity created by the Hall this year to add input for the overall selection process. Once the committee has completed its task of trimming the 183 nominees to 50-plus ties over the next several weeks, the separate Seniors Blue Ribbon Committee will make additional reductions in several stages. In late fall, the Seniors Blue-Ribbon Committee will select three Seniors as finalists for possible selection for the Class of '25.
Players must have last played at least 25 full seasons ago to be eligible for nomination by the Seniors Screening Committee. The new class will be selected in the days before Super Bowl LIX in New Orleans and will be enshrined in Canton, OH, in August.
